Surprised how excited y'all are. I am a massive .Hack fan, and I'm pretty psyched about this news as the story in G.U. is excellent, but holy hell am I not really looking forward to actually playing through the game again. Outside of Avatar battles, the gameplay is an absolute bore fest.

Surprised how excited y'all are. I am a massive .Hack fan, and I'm pretty psyched about this news as the story in G.U. is excellent, but holy hell am I not really looking forward to actually playing through the game again. Outside of Avatar battles, the gameplay is an absolute bore fest.

You say that as if you've actually played it. Because if so, you're already one of the chosen few. There's no need to talk down to the rest of us, who are not even allowed to grace such halls without offering hundreds of dollars to the eBay gods...

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“MY NAME IS POKEY THE PENGUIN I LOVE CHESS!! IT IS LIKE BALLET ONLY WITH MORE EXPLOSIONS!”I Draw Stuff Sometimes

Surprised how excited y'all are. I am a massive .Hack fan, and I'm pretty psyched about this news as the story in G.U. is excellent, but holy hell am I not really looking forward to actually playing through the game again. Outside of Avatar battles, the gameplay is an absolute bore fest.

Eh I enjoyed the gameplay. Heck I've played through the entire G.U. series three times now? Now if we were talking about the original .hack series...that I have avoided replaying through and I am not 100% positive I could bring myself to replay through that entirely due to the gameplay. >.>

Pretty much with Klutz here. The .hack series has one of my favorite settings and it's used very well in G.U., but goddamn is the game a slog. The basic gameplay is decent enough, but there's only really like 5 dungeons and you repeat it over and over through the 3 games. Same as the IMOQ games really, but you'd think they would've improved on that. In some ways I actually prefer the IMOQ gameplay- those games felt a little more strategic whereas GU was a lot of button mashing. Making it so that you had to press X over and over to make Kite attack was insanity though.

Anyway glad you guys who didn't get to play it can get the chance now. I want to say I'd prefer a sequel but then I remember they already kinda made one, and it wasn't very good. G.U. was the last time it felt like they gave a crap.

Pretty much with Klutz here. The .hack series has one of my favorite settings and it's used very well in G.U., but goddamn is the game a slog. The basic gameplay is decent enough, but there's only really like 5 dungeons and you repeat it over and over through the 3 games. Same as the IMOQ games really, but you'd think they would've improved on that. In some ways I actually prefer the IMOQ gameplay- those games felt a little more strategic whereas GU was a lot of button mashing. Making it so that you had to press X over and over to make Kite attack was insanity though.

Anyway glad you guys who didn't get to play it can get the chance now. I want to say I'd prefer a sequel but then I remember they already kinda made one, and it wasn't very good. G.U. was the last time it felt like they gave a crap.

I'd say that they did improve on it a bit from the original series. As I recall the dungeons in the original series were all 3+ levels, while G.U. has 3 at the max I think? Plus I recall there are fields with different objectives and some fields that don't have dungeon dives at all. In addition, they do add new field types as the trilogy goes on (for example I recall canyons being added in 2).

I'm not going to deny that the games are very repetitive, but I do think they are better than the original saga at least in terms of fields. On the bright side though, they are apparently trying to decrease the slog a bit. Found one article that lists the changes as:

Game system evolutions•Retry feature added•Movement speed increased•Auto mode (play with your strongest levels and equipment)•Maximum items you can possess has been increased to 90•Item menu shortcuts and sort features•Feature to use the same item over and over•Empty equipment slots are easier to understand•Maximum Chim Spheres and Virus Cores you can possess has increased to 999•New recovery method “leisurely break” added to the platform, available from the early stages•You can choose between Saku and Bo in the party•Decreased the probability of allies selling the items you give them•Improvements made in Vol. 2 and Vol. 3 have been applied to Vol. 1•Attack power has been increased and hit stops during attacks have been reduced to speed up the battle tempo•Learning weapons proficiency increased and acquired experience points increased•You can skip Awakening scenes•Some tough enemies have been made a bit easier•Keith’s general shot bullet speed has increased•Avatar battle balance revised•Added suspend feature during Avatar battle gameplay•In Vol. 3, changed it to make it possible to do the marriage events with all characters that can become your ally, without having to redo them

Additional Elements•The videos from “The End of the World” Terminal Disc included with the original PS2 release of Vol. 1 are included in the collection•There is a Haseo with an unfamiliar face…

Interview Tidbits•2017 is the 15th anniversary since the release of .hack and the 10th anniversary since the release of G.U., as well as the year G.U. is set. In order to commemorate that, we thought to reboot the series.•This is a remaster rather than a new work because we want introduce the younger generation to .hack since it has been so long.•As for the new elements, you will be able to meet a “Haseo” you “don’t know.”•Since it’s the 15th anniversary of .hack, there are also other projects moving along.

Surprised how excited y'all are. I am a massive .Hack fan, and I'm pretty psyched about this news as the story in G.U. is excellent, but holy hell am I not really looking forward to actually playing through the game again. Outside of Avatar battles, the gameplay is an absolute bore fest.

With most remaster/remakes I don't bother playing them again. I think the only remake I bought of a game I already have was Valkyria Chronicles and that was just because I wanted to take pictures.

The original IMOQ series was so massively bloated that you could easily tell that Bandai simply took one JRPG and stretched it across four disks. In fact, they were so bad about this, they had all of the cutscenes from across all four games on the fourth game's disk stored upon it. The whole system was needlessly complicated and artificially expensive for no meaningful gain (the gameplay remained the same throughout, you just got access to the next town/server/dungeons/set of characters).

GU was a marked improvement simply because A) you had more than one move set to last you across 4 games B) the levels were less 'empty copy pasta field that you had to both comb and grind on for an arbitrary reward' C) the dungeons were smaller and less grindy (still Dungeon Crawler levels of repetitive, but not as bad as IMOQ's 6 types) D) there's more plot (the very first game has the opening bits with Orca and Kite, a few introductions, about six plot dungeons, and the first of the 12 major plot bosses as the game's final boss; that's the equivalent of Cecil getting shipwrecked onto Mystria's coast, Terra flipping out after kicking out Kefka of Narshe, getting off the Boat at Costa De Sol, or watching the Crusaders getting their butts waxed at Mi'hen Highroad in FFs IV, VI, VII and X respectfully; and then the second and third games were largely busting up the other Phases with the occasional encounter with Cubia, with the third game ending with everything getting covered with textured puke, and then the fourth was the game that actually explained what the hell was going on), and so on.

Admittedly the plot itself was a downgrade since you starred noted Edgelord Haseo, of whom I have words about, but mentioning anything about him other than he gets deleveled and is a self proclaimed PKK'er (Player Killer Killer for those of you born in the Tens or lived under a rock throughout the Aughts; he killed Player Killers) would constitute major spoilers, and that he pursued noted Edgelord Tri-Edge, and that's just within the first hour or so of gameplay. Compared to milquetoast everyguy Kite, who actually works due to the setting allowing for it (he's just a random gamer who's in way over his head and is only really sticking around because he's a nice guy, his friend got hurt, is fairly persistent and also the ring bearer). And then the situation itself went from sudo-anime Sci-Fi to full on anime drama.

Huh, I just remembered something from G.U. that I had forgotten entirely about. The card mini-game. I am going to have to remember what the heck the good strategy in that game was. Actually I think there were some changes between 2 and 3, so I wonder if those will be applied to 2 like the combat improvements or not.

The original IMOQ series was so massively bloated that you could easily tell that Bandai simply took one JRPG and stretched it across four disks. In fact, they were so bad about this, they had all of the cutscenes from across all four games on the fourth game's disk stored upon it.

If I recall correctly, I don't believe this is actually true. As I recall in the original series, you had to insert the Infection disk in order to be able to view the cutscenes from Infection in the cut scene viewer in Quarantine (might have started in Outbreak?). It has been a while since I last played Quarantine though, so I don't remember if that was just for Japanese audio or if it was for both audio tracks.